The Impact of Digital Platform Rapid Release Strategy on App Update Behavior: An Empirical Study of Firefox

The success of platform-based software ecosystems depends on the crucial coordination between the platform and third-party applications during co-evolution. Leveraging the change of platform release governance of Firefox, this paper examines the impact of the rapid release process on app update behavior (app responsiveness and app size change). Drawing on boundary resource perspective, we theorize how rapid release process as a social boundary resource affects app update behavior, and how app developers’ usage of technical boundary resource (i.e. platform API) affects this impact. Using a unique longitudinal dataset in Firefox, we conduct empirical analyses and conclude that the rapid release process decreases size change of app updates while platform API usage enhances app responsiveness. Moreover, platform API usage strengthens the effects of the rapid release process on app update behavior. This research enhances our understanding of the impact of platform governance practices on platform-third party coordination and provides practical guidance. Keywords: Platform-based software ecosystem, platform governance, app update, Rapid Release, boundary resourc

Survey of End-to-End Mobile Network Measurement Testbeds, Tools, and Services

Mobile (cellular) networks enable innovation, but can also stifle it and lead to user frustration when network performance falls below expectations. As mobile networks become the predominant method of Internet access, developer, research, network operator, and regulatory communities have taken an increased interest in measuring end-to-end mobile network performance to, among other goals, minimize negative impact on application responsiveness. In this survey we examine current approaches to end-to-end mobile network performance measurement, diagnosis, and application prototyping. We compare available tools and their shortcomings with respect to the needs of researchers, developers, regulators, and the public. We intend for this survey to provide a comprehensive view of currently active efforts and some auspicious directions for future work in mobile network measurement and mobile application performance evaluation.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials. arXiv does not format the URL references correctly. For a correctly formatted version of this paper go to http://www.cs.montana.edu/mwittie/publications/Goel14Survey.pd

Large-Scale Analysis of Framework-Specific Exceptions in Android Apps

Mobile apps have become ubiquitous. For app developers, it is a key priority to ensure their apps' correctness and reliability. However, many apps still suffer from occasional to frequent crashes, weakening their competitive edge. Large-scale, deep analyses of the characteristics of real-world app crashes can provide useful insights to guide developers, or help improve testing and analysis tools. However, such studies do not exist -- this paper fills this gap. Over a four-month long effort, we have collected 16,245 unique exception traces from 2,486 open-source Android apps, and observed that framework-specific exceptions account for the majority of these crashes. We then extensively investigated the 8,243 framework-specific exceptions (which took six person-months): (1) identifying their characteristics (e.g., manifestation locations, common fault categories), (2) evaluating their manifestation via state-of-the-art bug detection techniques, and (3) reviewing their fixes. Besides the insights they provide, these findings motivate and enable follow-up research on mobile apps, such as bug detection, fault localization and patch generation. In addition, to demonstrate the utility of our findings, we have optimized Stoat, a dynamic testing tool, and implemented ExLocator, an exception localization tool, for Android apps. Stoat is able to quickly uncover three previously-unknown, confirmed/fixed crashes in Gmail and Google+; ExLocator is capable of precisely locating the root causes of identified exceptions in real-world apps. Our substantial dataset is made publicly available to share with and benefit the community.Comment: ICSE'18: the 40th International Conference on Software Engineerin

From backend to Dashmobile: expanding the horizons of the drone engineering ecosystem

The Drone Engineering Ecosystem (DEE) project is a groundbreaking initiative that aims to simplify access to the world of drones and promote their responsible use, particularly in the educational domain. Traditional methods of drone control and interaction have been complex and fragmented. The DEE project seeks to overcome these challenges by integrating various technologies, including Python, Tkinter, FastAPI, MongoDB, Flutter, and Dart, to create a cohesive and user-friendly ecosystem. The project began with a comprehensive analysis of the existing drone ecosystem, identifying its limitations and areas for improvement. This was followed by the formulation of clear objectives and a detailed work plan, visualized through a Gantt chart. The development process encompassed the creation of a robust backend, significant enhancements to the existing dashboard, and the development of a mobile application using Flutter. One of the main challenges was the integration of new technologies like Flutter and Dart, which were learned specifically for this project. Rigorous testing and user experience evaluation were integral to ensuring the system's functionality and usability. The project's success not only achieved most of the set goals but also opened new avenues for future exploration and development in the drone technology field. My passion for programming and the application of my Telecommunications Engineering bachelor's degree were key drivers in the project's success. The project represents a significant contribution to the field, providing a platform for learning and promoting the responsible use of drones. It also reflects my commitment to challenging myself and applying my academic knowledge to real-world problems.Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::4 - Educació de Qualita

DYNAMICS OF SUCCESS FOR MOBILE GAMES: THE CASE OF EARLY-STAGE STARTUPS

The competitive mobile app markets along with the lack of business experience of mobile app startups has created many challenges for startups in their efforts to create a viable business through developing and publishing apps. In this study, we collected data from 20 international mobile game startups that were working on their first commercial game with the aim to develop a successful game as the first step toward a successful business. Through a classic grounded theory methodology, we developed a theoretical model. Our model depicts how startups work with three requirements of visibility, quality and user engagement toward success while enhancing each and every one of the requirements through online and offline social interactions with various members of the mobile ecosystem. Our study contributes to the existing literature on mobile app development and the interactions of startups with the platform owner, users, and their games artefact, particularly by highlighting how the startups leverage the social aspects of mobile app platforms for success. It also contributes to the knowledge on business creation in startups through explaining the fundamental factors that early-stage mobile game startups consider in their work on mobile platforms to create a successful business

Caveats in Eliciting Mobile App Requirements

Factors such as app stores or platform choices heavily affect functional and non-functional mobile app requirements. We surveyed 45 companies and interviewed ten experts to explore how factors that impact mobile app requirements are understood by requirements engineers in the mobile app industry. We observed a lack of knowledge in several areas. For instance, we observed that all practitioners were aware of data privacy concerns, however, they did not know that certain third-party libraries, usage aggregators, or advertising libraries also occasionally leak sensitive user data. Similarly, certain functional requirements may not be implementable in the absence of a third-party library that is either banned from an app store for policy violations or lacks features, for instance, missing desired features in ARKit library for iOS made practitioners turn to Android. We conclude that requirements engineers should have adequate technical experience with mobile app development as well as sufficient knowledge in areas such as privacy, security and law, in order to make informed decisions during requirements elicitation.Comment: The 24th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE 2020

Improving Data Efficiency Using Content Management System

This project has been carried out to identify major problems in a website like look and feel of the web pages, branding qualities, website search engine compatibility and identifying/tracking the status of the pages. To achieve this, Responsive Web Design (RWD) concepts, Web Analytics, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) tags are implemented for sophisticated performance and adaptability. It’s very essential to have a well-organized and dynamic website. Website should be more professional to gain the fruitful outcomes. Website related content was updated dynamically through admin console using Content Management System (CMS). Admin / content manager / targeted preferred credential users could more effectively update the content via this Content Management System (CMS) web tool and was very easy to maintain huge content in a very effective way. There are many ways to achieve this, have many content driven tools and web-pages which do this job without any extra effort. The major benefit of this tool was even a nontechnical person could easily update or manage the webpage without any technical training. In today’s market, most of the data is written and deployed using small / medium form factors like mobiles or tablet devices. Users easily update the data while on the go. The content of the website could be effortlessly managed even by a non-technical person quickly and easily without any complicated programming. The website automatically spreads to fit mobiles, tablets and any browser windows using CMS. Using Agile Methodology, the project quality was improved in most effective way. Data was collected and analyzed using different tools and techniques

Improving Android app security and privacy with developers

Existing research has uncovered many security vulnerabilities in Android applications (apps) caused by inexperienced, and unmotivated developers. Especially, the lack of tool support makes it hard for developers to avoid common security and privacy problems in Android apps. As a result, this leads to apps with security vulnerability that exposes end users to a multitude of attacks. This thesis presents a line of work that studies and supports Android developers in writing more secure code. We first studied to which extent tool support can help developers in creating more secure applications. To this end, we developed and evaluated an Android Studio extension that identifies common security problems of Android apps, and provides developers suggestions to more secure alternatives. Subsequently, we focused on the issue of outdated third-party libraries in apps which also is the root cause for a variety of security vulnerabilities. Therefore, we analyzed all popular 3rd party libraries in the Android ecosystem, and provided developers feedback and guidance in the form of tool support in their development environment to fix such security problems. In the second part of this thesis, we empirically studied and measured the impact of user reviews on app security and privacy evolution. Thus, we built a review classifier to identify security and privacy related reviews and performed regression analysis to measure their impact on the evolution of security and privacy in Android apps. Based on our results we proposed several suggestions to improve the security and privacy of Android apps by leveraging user feedbacks to create incentives for developers to improve their apps toward better versions.Die bisherige Forschung zeigt eine Vielzahl von Sicherheitslücken in Android-Applikationen auf, welche sich auf unerfahrene und unmotivierte Entwickler zurückführen lassen. Insbesondere ein Mangel an Unterstützung durch Tools erschwert es den Entwicklern, häufig auftretende Sicherheits- und Datenschutzprobleme in Android Apps zu vermeiden. Als Folge führt dies zu Apps mit Sicherheitsschwachstellen, die Benutzer einer Vielzahl von Angriffen aussetzen. Diese Dissertation präsentiert eine Reihe von Forschungsarbeiten, die Android-Entwickler bei der Entwicklung von sichereren Apps untersucht und unterstützt. In einem ersten Schritt untersuchten wir, inwieweit die Tool-Unterstützung Entwicklern beim Schreiben von sicherem Code helfen kann. Zu diesem Zweck entwickelten und evaluierten wir eine Android Studio-Erweiterung, die gängige Sicherheitsprobleme von Android-Apps identifiziert und Entwicklern Vorschläge für sicherere Alternativen bietet. Daran anknüpfend, konzentrierten wir uns auf das Problem veralteter Bibliotheken von Drittanbietern in Apps, die ebenfalls häufig die Ursache von Sicherheitslücken sein können. Hierzu analysierten wir alle gängigen 3rd-Party-Bibliotheken im Android-Ökosystem und gaben den Entwicklern Feedback und Anleitung in Form von Tool-Unterstützung in ihrer Entwicklungsumgebung, um solche Sicherheitsprobleme zu beheben. Im zweiten Teil dieser Dissertation untersuchten wir empirisch die Auswirkungen von Benutzer-Reviews im Android Appstore auf die Entwicklung der Sicherheit und des Datenschutzes von Apps. Zu diesem Zweck entwickelten wir einen Review-Klassifikator, welcher in der Lage ist sicherheits- und datenschutzbezogene Reviews zu identifizieren. Nachfolgend untersuchten wir den Einfluss solcher Reviews auf die Entwicklung der Sicherheit und des Datenschutzes in Android-Apps mithilfe einer Regressionsanalyse. Basierend auf unseren Ergebnissen präsentieren wir verschiedene Vorschläge zur Verbesserung der Sicherheit und des Datenschutzes von Android-Apps, welche die Reviews der Benutzer zur Schaffung von Anreizen für Entwickler nutzen